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Sep 17 , 2022 . By Christian Tesfaye

Nope

Few would have imagined that the Peele in Key & Peele, a show on MTV's Comedy Central, would become a world-class director reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher. There is a sketch from Key & Peele, titled Town Hall Audience Member, one of the funniest outputs of the show, where J...

Sep 10 , 2022 . By Christian Tesfaye

RRR: PEAK OF BOLLYWOOD, FOR BETTER OR WORSE

Bollywood has finally peaked. The sentimentalism, chirpy musical numbers, physics-defying fight scenes and aggressively cheesy romantic plots have all come into their own in RRR, one of the biggest Bollywood hits in recent memory to gain an international audience. I would normally object to individual elements of the movie, including its ludicrous storyline and plot holes. But the way they have come together is strangely fascinating. RRR, which is short for “Rise, Roar, Revolt" and must be one of the dullest film titles ever, is the story of 1920s India as it struggles under the yoke of B...


Apr 30 , 2022 . By Christian Tesfaye

THE BATMAN: GRITTY GOOD

One of the most anticipated movies of the year has been The Batman. It is the first live-action solo film for the titular character since 2012's The Dark Knight Rises. For DC, it is ironic that it was probably Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy that ruined the extended universe they tried to get off the ground. Nolan's interpretation of Batman and Gotham led to such critical and commercial success that producers assumed that is what the whole of the DCEU should look like. When that went nowhere with the slog that was Man of Steel, they panicked and attempted to be as light-hearted as Marv...


Jul 25 , 2020 . By Christian Tesfaye

THE OFFICE: DARKLY COMEDIC, LIGHTLY TRAGIC

The advantage that TV shows have over movies is the sheer amount of time at their disposal for character development. And there are few shows that have taken to exploiting this advantage with a sense of zeal that has rarely ever been achieved as has the American version of The Office. It is supposed to be funny. And it is. The shenanigans the characters get themselves into episode after episode are creative and endlessly amusing. The problem is that, as the seasons go on, it feels like we are laughing at the characters, not with them. It is a strange show on insisting to never allow its cha...

Movie Review

Jan 7 , 2022

THE KING'S MAN: BETTER THAN THEY SAY

Sometimes the critics are just wrong. This is true for The King's Man, the third instalment in the Kingsman franchise. Admittedly, it is not as joyful and a breath of fresh air as the first movie, Kin...

Jan 1 , 2022

SPIDER-MAN SLINGS ALONG NOSTALGIA AVENUE

At first, I was sceptical of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It seemed cheap, uninspired and dull. There were some good movies, such as Iron Man and perhaps even the first The Avengers, but much...

Oct 16 , 2021

THE KOREAN CINEMATIC 'INVASION'

Every once in a while, there is a TV show that goes viral. Shortly after COVID-19, it was Tiger King, an almost surreal mini-series about exotic zookeepers. Now, it is Squid Game, a Korean thriller pr...

Oct 9 , 2021

NO TIME TO DIE

It was neither shaken nor stirred but brewed at an upscale ceremony Heineken Ethiopia held at the Sheraton Addis. The occasion was a screening of the brand new 25th outing to the most celebrated spy i...

Sep 26 , 2021

FREE GUY - THE ANTI-MATRIX

For the first decade and a half of his career, Ryan Reynolds was an actor who could not figure out who he wanted to be. He dabbled in action movies (Smokin' Aces, Safe House), superhero flicks (Green...

Sep 10 , 2021

SHANG CHI: MARVEL''S REPRESENTATION TENTPOLE

Representation and fairness – those are the big words in Hollywood these days. A century after it was discovered, cinema is reckoning with its relationship with people who are neither white nor male...

Sep 4 , 2021

OZ: WHEN NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

Before Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and The Wire, there was Oz, the TV show that started it all for Home Box Office (HBO). But not only for HBO, it was one of the first experiments with a TV series w...

May 15 , 2021

HOPKINS SHINES THROUGH THE TWILIGHT OF THE FATHER

The darling of the last Academy Awards was Nomadland, a slow travel movie about homelessness directed by a Chinese Ethnic. A few years ago, Mank, a film about the writing of Citizen Kane, would have b...

May 8 , 2021

GORY KOMBAT, MORTAL DIALOGUE

Forget the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Princess Diana, the dot-com bubble, the rise and fall of grunge rock or the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Nothing screams “the nineties” like Mortal Ko...

Apr 30 , 2021

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN TAKES THE CAKE, THEN THROWS IT IN EVERYONE'S FACE

Last year was not a bad time for movies. True, several major releases were postponed as a result of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. But these were largely big productions that had cost a lo...

Jan 23 , 2021

SHADOW IN THE CLOUDS, WOMEN UNDER PATRIARCHY

Some movies require a specific mood and environment for watching. Sometimes, we want a movie to not be too complicated, but easy to understand, the sort where the story takes the audience on a fun...

Jan 3 , 2021

SOUL, QUITE SOULFUL

Suppose Freud's theories into the human psyche were more sanitised of his obsession with sexuality and his predictions and understanding were more life-affirming. In that case, it might have resembled...

Dec 26 , 2020

On the Nolanite Tradition of Time, Reality: Taken Too Far

After months of waiting following its release in the West, Tenet has finally hit theatres here in Ethiopia, showing in malls in at least two locations, at Century Mall and Biresh CinePlus. It is on...

Nov 29 , 2020

TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN

It is often in history that the story of the present could be told colourfully, and perhaps even meaningfully. There is nothing like seeing our present through the lens of yesterday. It makes us more...

Oct 31 , 2020

BORAT: 'VERY NICE' MOVIE AMERICANA

Borat Sagdiyev - the Kazakh who stole our hearts with his unfathomable levels of anti-Semitism, sexism and racism - is back. And as our current state of politics would have it, his experiences are eve...

Sep 19 , 2020

Residue: Spiritual Sequel to Teza

Residue is the spiritual sequel to the acclaimed Teza. The latter is a movie by Ethiopia's single most acclaimed filmmaker, Haile Gerima, while Residue is the directorial debut of his son, Merawi...


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